#also i know it's been kind of polarizing but i'm on the side of 'post ew msq has been kind of a let down and i'm just not that into it'

[crowlore]

is dawntrail seriously just around the cover it honestly feels like endwalker just came out

[itoshiexx]

when you call them "husband" - part. 2

how the blue lock boyfriends react when you call them "husband" - part 2

pairings: itoshi rin, michael kaiser, mikage reo x fem!reader (no descriptions tho, just the words "wife" on rin's part) (separate) | warnings: established relationship, fluff, lovesick boys

notes: I'M ALIVE! i cant believe how long it's been since i had time/energy/creativity to write something, ohmy goddddddd. i'm so sorry for all the time it took to post this, but i wanna ty all so much for all the love on part 1 and all the requests for part 2! hopefully this will meet your expectations ♥ as always, i went a lil' overboard with rin's part. enjoy!

part 1 / masterlist

Itoshi Rin

rin was not a fan of social media. it was clear with the way his instagram only had 8 pictures despite being years since his career started, and even more so by the fact he had no other social media besides that. if he wasn’t so famous, people would say itoshi rin was a ghost or some artificial intelligence invention. 

it was one of the reasons people were very shocked when he started dating you, an influencer with millions of followers on every platform. rin was a private person, and you… well, you shared your life on the internet for everyone to see. to say you were polar opposites was an understatement.

however, you never forced your boyfriend to appear in any of your socials, only recording things for your own fun and memories and posting only what he allowed. rin was glad for that. he didn’t mind doing dumb things with you to see you smile, as long as the rest of the world couldn’t see how whipped he was for you.

also, you were kind of glad the professional athlete was so unaware of social media, because it meant you could do a lot of tiktok trends without the risk of him already knowing what was coming — which made everything more satisfying. 

and the trend you chose that day was especially good.

“hey everyone, it’s y/n here!” you chirped, waving your hands in front of your phone. however, you were actually recording rin, who was at the other side waiting for your sign to appear on the screen.

you continued speaking. “today i have a very special guest, who i’m sure you’re all very familiar with.” you gave the camera a little cheeky wink, and your boyfriend rolled his eyes with all your theatrics. “please welcome itoshi rin, my handsome husband!”

rin gave a step forward to start his way to you, but suddenly, his whole body froze, brows furrowing in what you could only call utmost confusion. silence took over the room for what felt like an eternity, and you had to suppress your laugh seeing the imaginary ‘loading’ wheel on his head.

rin.exe stopped working.

“baby?” you decided to intervene, honestly a little scared of how immobile rin was.

“you— i’m— did you just— did we—”

you could no longer hold your laughter, and rin’s favorite melody echoing through the walls of your shared apartment was probably what snapped him out of his trance. he immediately scowled and crossed his arms, cheeks burning red from his pathetic stutter.

“i am never doing these dumb videos with you again.”

“no, no, i’m sorry!” your giggles kept going, and you approached your pouty boyfriend, squishing his cheeks between your hands. the smooch you gave him was almost enough to make him melt. almost. rin still had some self respect.

he also didn’t want to admit how abnormally fast his stone heart was beating with the mere thought of being referred to as your husband — and, even better, referring to you as his wife. 

fuck. that certainly did make him feel lots of things. those stupid butterflies that were born the minute you met were roaming freely in his stomach, soaring with all the love he had harbored just for you. 

“i’m sorry, baby,” you said again, smiling like you swallowed the sun and all things good in this world. you might as well have. how else could rin explain the way you were his everything? “it was a prank i saw on tiktok.”

he arched his eyebrow, arms uncrossing to put his hands on your waist. “oh? so you don’t want me to be your husband?”

the itoshi was satisfied to see you flushing this time. “i— w-well, you see…”

and then you started rambling, just like you did every time something made you nervous. and rin could only look at you as if nothing else was worth looking at, because really, to him, it wasn’t. 

…well, maybe the sight of you walking down the aisle would get the cake. he might have to find out soon. 

Michael Kaiser

once you started dating bastard munchen’s star, michael kaiser, it was natural to have his world collide with yours. everything from football to blue hair dye to weird sleeping habits became a part of you as well, and you nourished every expanse of your world his presence alone was able to give.

your favorite part, besides learning all of him — his little habits, quirks and love languages that seemed to be crafted solely for you — was definitely immersing yourself in his culture. germany always seemed distant and quite detached from your life, and you loved to learn new things from different perspectives. 

food, traditions, language… michael loved teaching you things, giddy and secretly grateful for your excitement. it was his sparkly eyes that prompted you to learn a few things by yourself to surprise him and make him happy. 

the tiktok trend was just a nice coincidence. 

you phone was hidden on the kitchen balcony, camera recording and waiting for the moment your boyfriend would arrive in your shared apartment. luckily, kaiser was very punctual, and you didn’t have to wait much longer.

“liebling, i’m home!” you heard him scream from the front door, and you giggled to yourself, pretending to be busy chopping vegetables for dinner. 

you waited for his footsteps to near where you were, and, as soon as you felt he entered the camera frame, you answered:

“welcome home, ehemann!”

you didn’t have to turn around to see the way kaiser completely froze; arms stopping just before reaching your waist as if your figure was an illusion created by his tired mind. you fought hard to suppress your grin.

“what… did you say…?” his voice was low and uncertain, but there was no annoyance in it; just pure confusion. 

turning your head around to finally look at him, you were pleased to find your mikka with rosy cheeks and a bashful expression, so extremely unusual for a guy like him you couldn’t help but feel your heart flutter on your chest. 

you gave him your best innocent look. “huh? isn’t that how you say boyfriend?”

“i-it’s husband, liebe. you called me husband,” his tone was still incredulous, and this time, you couldn’t keep your smile off your face. 

“oh, did i?”

your countenance seemed to finally snap him out of his trance, and michael’s eyebrows shot up, scoffing slightly — albeit still endearingly. his arms circled your waist and he pressed a kiss on the side of your neck. 

“how mean of you, baby. playing with my heart like that.” he trailed more kisses on your neck and jaw, making you squirm. “you tryin’ to kill me or something?”

you giggled again, both from the ticklish kisses he was giving you and the huge amount of love you had harbored just for him. “of course not, baby. i need you alive to make you my husband,” you jested.

“oh, yeah? you wanna make me your husband?”

“yes.” you shifted, giving him a sweet kiss on the cheek. kaiser hugged you a little tighter, feeling something fuzzy inside his chest. “is that a problem?”

“never,” he answered immediately. because it was true.

boyfriend, fiancé, partner, husband… michael didn’t mind what title would be bestowed to him — as long as he could keep being yours.

Mikage Reo

being the heir of one of the biggest corporations of the country and a professional football player made your boyfriend’s schedule pretty busy. therefore, thursdays like these, where you and him could have a nice walk around the park under the warm sunlight, hand in hand, were extremely rare — hence why they were so appreciated.

reo knew how much his frenetic agenda was a hard toll on your relationship, affecting both of you with distance, longing and short periods of time together. and, well, everyone knew how much of a goner he was for you, so it wasn’t surprising to see him give in whatever spare time he had in his hands — even going as far as making such time exist if there wasn’t any — to be with you for as long as he possibly could.

how could he deny your pretty little eyes pleading to have a stroll in the park with him ‘just for a few minutes?’

god, you were so selfless. he wanted to give you all of his minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. and for all that’s worth, reo would never deny you of such a thing — he’d rather shoot himself than make you think you weren’t loved with every fiber of his being.

the weather was nice; a gentle breeze kissing both of your faces and making everything more pleasant. you were both chatting and appreciating the calm environment when you spotted an old lady a few feet ahead, selling different colored roses for the passersby. a smile was etched onto your lips, and you impulsively let go of reo’s hand to run towards her. 

“why hello, dear. would you like to buy a rose?”

your boyfriend watched you beam to the lady and slowly approached you, though still keeping his distance and trying hard not to intervene and buy all the roses for you. 

“yes, please! a red one would be perfect.”

“oh, who will you give it to?” asked the woman, already taking one flower from the bunch to hand it to you. 

your smile became slightly more bashful, “it’s for my husband!”

and fuck, if reo wasn’t already completely in love with you and thoroughly believed you were his soulmate until then, he certainly would after that very moment. he could feel his cheeks burning and his tongue rolling inside his mouth with how speechless he became. his heart soared with your words, excitement coursing through his veins with a love so overwhelming he nearly fell on his knees right there. 

heavens, he loved you so fucking much. and you made him realize it was about time he proved it to you (once again).

his hands easily found his phone in his pocket, and a quick call to the jewelry store was made while you busied yourself with paying for the flower. reo couldn’t stop smiling like a lovesick fool, but he didn’t mind.

“hey, mr. fuji, it’s mikage! you know, i think it’s time for that visit i mentioned a while ago…”

he might not fall to his knees right there, but he would drop at one knee very soon.

[videogamelover99]

OKAY BUT LISTEN. LISTEN. I WANNA BREAK DOWN SOME OF THE PANELS FROM THIS SCENE CAUSE UH. This is like a powerpoint of the audience realizing the Sheep are not Chuuya's friends.

First off, baby? Baby. Also Chuuya's body language in the art is so, like, embarassed/self-conscious teen, except instead of the problem being hanging out with the wrong people in high school its...Mafia-level stakes. Anyway, Chuuya curling up while hiding from his "friends" immediately gives you a sense he is not the one in control.

Dazai-like expression who? Chuuya is putting on a mask so eerily similar...it gives us some great parallels.

Chuuya unnecessarily apologizing to Shirase? Yeah. Straight from the book.

Insane over Shirase's solid B+ gaslighting. I don't remember if these lines are from the book, but Shirase implying Chuuya's the one "acting like a tyrant" when he literally didn't do anything?? Except ask politely for favors? Throughout the whole conversation he's been the polar opposite. But hey, maybe Shirase's just projecting.

Haha, "somehow".

Nothing to add here except Shirase's body language in this is SO much better than the anime. In the anime he just acted mad and kinda hot-headed. Here he's smiling, acting friendly, giving off those "ofc I'm on your side Chuuya but you make it so hard for these made-up reasons" vibes. Shirase is opportunistic, manipulative, he believes he has control over Chuuya, and therefore his ability.

Of course, Dazai can tell immediately what Shirase is doing. That Shirase has more power over Chuuya than Chuuya does over any of the Sheep (which is once again reinforced by the body language. Shirase's arm over Chuuya's shoulders, swamping him. Being physically taller than Chuuya. Chuuya just kind of standing there, passively.

Also despite what Shirase seems to believe, he and the other Sheep are not one bit smarter than Chuuya. They're eagerly celebrating their victory when Chuuya can clearly tell this is some sort of plan on Dazai's part.

Dazai destroying any leverage they had over Chuuya and yet knowing there's some reason Chuuya is doing this anyway. Offering him a choice.

As I've said before (and it's more obvious than ever in the manga) Shirase's using it to gain Mafia territory by getting some of their members captured. I've stated this before, and we do get a confirmation:

The "self defense rule" is something Chuuya explicitly created. To not strike unless provoked. I have a lot of thoughts on this and why but that's not for this post.

And we have!! Dazai getting pissed off on Chuuya's behalf!! He's scary.

(Spoiler alert: they are not his friends.)

Ahhhh

Ahhhhhhhh

Guys I love this chapter. Because on one hand, Shirase, like the rest of the Sheep, have very legitimate fears. They're literally a bunch of kids that used to be preyed on by other organizations, and if Chuuya is not guaranteed to protect them, then...well...they're in horrible danger, really.

The problem is that Chuuya is ready to protect them. But they don't trust him, and it seems they never have. The whole thing is built on Shirase (and probably the others) holding some kind of emotional and social power over Chuuya, therefore guaranteeing their safety. But when that's not longer the case, well, they don't trust Chuuya to protect them. I'm curious how the manga is going to adapt Dazai's whole "meat" story later on because the issue isn't a selfish conflict of interest. The issue is trust, and the lack of it between Chuuya and the rest of the Sheep.

It's like the Sheep built their gang on high school clique rules, and didn't realize Chuuya's not just operating out of a sense of obligation and need to belong, but genuine care. Anyway, that's all I have to say. The art is beautiful.

[lostdrarryfics]

lostdrarryfics monthly roundup! May 2024

Below you will find the requests we could not locate in the month of May. Please let us know if you recognize any!

You can also browse our lengthy lost fic masterlist, where we have compiled every request we have been unable to find over the past few years. We're always hoping someone will recognize a fic so we can let the asker know what it was!

1. D ends up with H before the battle at hogwarts. I remember Narcissa being with them when they basically handed draco over. I think they stay at grimmauld place in the beginning but they get separated (I might be confusing it for another fic). The most important detail is that D and H end up in a cottage owned by narcissa and followed by Voldy’s henchmen but the deatheaters can’t see the cottage so D and H are safe. I might have gotten the timing wrong and it might have been set right after the battle of hogwarts (I’m still not sure on this sorry) There’s also no graphic sex from what i remember. Fic is not Warding Bonds by AdareThompson

2. Harry is a celebrity chef, and Draco tweets at him for dinner, and Harry said he'd save him a table. Draco shows up and they cook together as a sort of date. The one key thing I remember is that Harry had a past relationship with Justin Finch-Fletchley but Justin dumped him.

3. it was about Draco being an unspeakable and what comes to my mind is this specific scene about Draco with one of his teammates joking about his nickname (all of them has a star's name as code name), talking about the pole star, I think Draco was "Polaris" and she said he was "Vega", like the ancient polar star, I can't remember much more. Draco was happy that he isn't recognized as a death eater between his co-workers and they really appreciated him. Harry was an auror? And they had to work together? I'm not really sure

4. Harry is Draco’s secretary and Draco makes him wear a skirt to work and it’s one chapter and smutty. Top Draco.

5. post-war drrary fic where Harry and Draco lived in the Malfoy Manor and they were in an established relationship. Then Draco's behaviour started to change, he became mean, and Harry gave him an ultimatum, promising he won't put a foot in the Manor again if he leaves. Then Harry leaves and I think Draco was about to get married. But then Narcissa comes to Harry and explains that Lucius has put a curse on Draco to break their relationship. I specifically remember that she told Harry that Draco was musing how to apologise to him. Harry then came back to the Manor. I think it was on ao3 but I'm not sure

6. I am looking for a Hogwarts era fic. It's after the war. Harry is fed up with being treated like a hero so he enters into a friends with benefits arrangement with Draco. They are sneaking away to hook up and have a lot of hate sex and bond over their taste in music. I specifically remember them having sex to Kashmir by Led Zeppelin and Deftones. Towards the end they start to realize they have feelings for each other.

7. Hogwarts Eighth year, lupin(alive) is the dada teacher again, drarry are sort of in a relationship or at least there's something going on. The one scene I remember distinctly is they're chosen for a demonstration duel during dada and they take the bow and stance but then draco concedes in front of the whole class, which is kind of a big deal in magical duels-as hermione tells harry, and then lupin wants to talk to draco after class(?)

8. drarry multi-chapter fic i read on ao3 a bit ago. it was set around christmas/holidays, established relationship, harry has mental health problems and is distant so draco thinks he's cheating on him but he reveals that hes been going to a mind healer like secretly. also i think teddy is in it and they go ice skating with him? the fic is about like draco helping harry get his life back together and fixing their relationship.

9. it takes place in hogwarts and there’s a secret lgbtq club in the school. I think there were some side pairings too besides drarry.

10. I read this ages ago, dont remember what site but it was complete and mature content. title was like Griffendor <something>, Slythering <something> (i think) after school, harry is a pro quidditch player and draco is a magazine editor or something? One of them decides to write a book (draco?) and goes to the other for help with source material(?). We find out that they are divorced and have been court ordered to stay away from each other because of destructive fights. There was also some flashbacks where they like fed each other strawberries and one of them (harry?) told the other that the cost of the strawberry was marriage? And there was something about a pair of lockets they had from when they were married that they still wear but are hiding from each other?

11. i think it was a war au, draco was at grimmauld because reasons and he was helping the order with the potions, at one point he helps snape or remus because they were hurt? And he and harry had this thing or something, but he caught harry kissing one of the twins and he thought that harry wasn't interested, but he was just like practicing the kisses or something?

12. Looking for a fic I read some years ago in german, but I am pretty sure it was translated from english. It is about Draco helping Harry and his friends escape from Malfoy Manor in the seventh book and being captured by the Death Eaters. He gets thrown into a cell without any sensory stimulation, but gets rescued after the war. The fic deals with the consequences of that, I am not quite sure if he is at St. Mungos for some time, but he definitely gets close to Harry in his healing process. Sorry if this is too vague or if it turns out that the fic was originally in german.

[spatort]

Hey I'm gonna take that opportunity to be nosy about your vampire novel bc anytime you mention it in your tags I'm sitting here like 👀👀 soooo if you feel like it tell me a bit about your ocs!! What are they like?

Hehe, glad you asked! (And noticed that I'm talking about it in my tags…)

Gonna put this under a cut just in case it gets long:

So my protagonist, lets call him J, was adopted by a vampire coven as a baby and turned into a vampire as an adult and because of that, pretty much everyone assumes that he is ~The Chosen One that has been prophesied to defeat The Big Bad Guy and save everyone. This presumed fate is kind of hanging over his head because it means he's basically a celebrity but he's actually pretty introverted and of course repressing loads of stuff (like his bloodlust. not only that of course, but he has the vampire equivalent of an ed). but also people are usually intimidated by him due to reasons, like the fact he has heterochromia like every good OC fantasy protag should. so, he's hung up about having to kill people and drink their blood (no vegetarian option here, it's either human blood or starve, no blood conserves or any of that shit either), but one time he spared the life of a guy he was supposed to kill and he's holding on to the thought that at least that means he can't be 100% a bad person.

as it happens, he runs into that guy again years after the fact, and this is my other major OC, let's call him E. He's a human and doesn't initially know that vampires exist, but he also has reason to believe that some kind of important fate awaits him. They pretty much immediately become friends, even though E is the polar opposite of J in many ways, he's the charismatic sunshine boy and ladies' man that everyone loves, essentially the dickie greenleaf of this story, and he definitely believes that he is the main character. So once J learns about E maybe also having a destiny of some kind, he starts wondering if E is the actual chosen one and he can somehow still get out of this whole schtick.

But in order to figure out who gets to kill the bad guy, they have to find him first, and here my third OC comes into play, G. I'm not gonna say too much about him because of plot spoilers, but essentially most vampires believes he is the ultimate bad guy that needs to be defeated and G's reaction to that is "You want a monster? I'm gonna be that monster alright". So he has this tough guy attitude and is prone to risky behavior, but he also has a super traumatic past and maybe there is another side to him? Wait and see I guess lol (if this gets ever written. But hey, I continued my current 35k ff wip after someone on tumblr made me talk about it, so who knows!! Definitely finishing that though before I can dive into these vampires again).

(I swear there are really cool female characters too, they're just unfortunately all supporting characters for reasons, I can maybe make a separate post about them? I should also definitely make fan art. But also I should write this instead of procrastinating lol)

[onyx-archer]

A Timey-Whimey (Shit)Storm: A Critical Look at Life is Strange 1's Ending.

It's been a hot minute since I did one of these essay type posts, and I know that the title is may suggest some kind of dislike of the game or something, and incite the ire of fans, but at least hear me out a little before getting mad. I actually enjoy these games, along with the comics, so I'm coming at this from a place of love. I especially have a soft spot for the original Life is Strange, I've just had this on my mind for a while.

Obviously, there will be spoilers for "Life is Strange," but I will also briefly cover spoilers from the Life is Strange comic series, and a brief, albeit minor spoiler of Life is Strange 2's 5th episode, and some stuff from Life is Strange: True Colors' "Wavelengths" DLC. If that ain't your bag, then you've been warned. All of it will be under the cut anyway. Before that though, I have some other house keeping to get out of the way.

I want to make it abundantly clear up front what my stance on the game being covered is, so there's no room for misunderstanding. I quite like the original Life is Strange. It's probably my favorite game of it's type (narrative adventure game in the Telltale style). I don't like Before the Storm or Life is Strange 2 though, but both of those will eventually get their own posts. I do like True Colors though.

I also want to make it clear that I am 100% on the side of "Pricefield," but I'm not really making this post from the place of a Pricefield bias or whatever, so I want to head that off at the pass.

With that, the rest is under the cut. Again, hella spoilers inbound, you've been warned.

Life is Strange is the kind of game that I have a pretty lukewarm opinion of genre wise, but manages to keep me engaged through the way it unfolds. I'm not especially fond of the narrative adventure game genre that was popularized with Season 1 of Telltale's The Walking Dead, despite having played quite a few of them. I like a few, sure, but it's generally not something I'm fond of. If not for the fact that Chloe's character design appealed to me (you'd know why if you've seen my original characters), I'd have never even touched it.

I have fond memories of playing the original Life is Strange with my best friend back when it was still being released, and how we'd actually hash out our thoughts on what decisions made the most sense in the moment while playing. I initially remember hating the ending of the original making my choices feel meaningless (as by the time "Polarized" came out, my friend and I weren't able to play together due to us living in 2 different cities at the time), and it was only after letting it marinate for a while that I came to the conclusion that I liked one of the two possible endings, and disliked the other.

I'm (rather obviously) on team "Bae," as far as the endings to the original are concerned. To me, this is the only ending that actually makes sense unless you want to argue that the whole point of the story is some fatalist, deterministic experience at it's core (which I've certainly seen argued multiple times), but I don't think that ideology is even remotely interesting to think about, and is flawed as hell. That's beside the point though. The part of this post that is dedicated to the first game is, primarily, about the reason why that ending is the only one that makes sense to me.

Throughout the game, Max (and by extension, we, the players) use her time travel powers to ultimately solve a few puzzles, and to otherwise scope out minor multiple decisions we make during the story. The moment we see Max use her powers for the first time is when Chloe (whom she doesn't recognize at the time) is shot in the girl's washroom at Blackwell. However, before she does this, she sees the vision of the Storm, and is jolted awake by it in the middle of class.

From here, the game tries to heavily imply that Max using her powers to save Chloe from being shot is what ultimately made the Storm come to pass, and drops mentions of the concept of Chaos Theory multiple times. I'm not going to bother explain what that means, but it does at least make some kind of sense. Max using her powers can alter the course of things, and create an untold amount of diverging timelines. We see this obviously through the "Bay" ending, as Chloe's death happens, and no storm comes. This is clearly to enforce the idea that Chloe not dying does something that causes the storm.

However, where this concept begins to eat shit like a skateboarder failing to bail properly from a bad Tre Flip is when Max goes back in time via a photo for the first time. She prevents the death of another person, Chloe's father, William. As we all know, this action has the consequence of Chloe eventually getting into a car accident and becoming quadriplegic, and is doomed to die when her respiratory system gives out due to the nature of the injury.

Now, this specific timeline brings with it questions, and the game doesn't really bother to answer them, despite it being a big hole in the whole "Chloe's death prevents the storm" idea.

The main question is "why didn't William not dying yield a storm?" If the idea of preventing a person from dying has far reaching consequences, and can lead to a storm, then why did William's survival not lead to a storm? Wouldn't that be a bigger shift to the "natural order of things" that Max saving Chloe did?

The cop-out answers I've heard to this are things like "she wouldn't have done it if she didn't save Chloe first to begin with" and "she didn't over-use her powers during the period of William's accident, so the storm wouldn't have been bad." I've even heard the idea that Chloe's accident is the universe saying "fuck you" to Max saving William, and while that is certainly believable, it ultimately makes you wonder "why are the dead whales even a thing in the 'William Lives' timeline?"

The second time I was left wondering is "in the timeline where Max is taken to the Dark Room, Chloe is very dead, so how is it that the storm happens at all if Chloe's survival is the reason it happens?"

Naturally, people will say "the act of saving Chloe sets things into motion, so it's too late to stop the storm by that point." It's here where I call bullshit, because it then makes you ask the question I brought up earlier: "why didn't the timeline where William lives have a storm after he was saved?" If the universe is pissed that Chloe lived, then her dying should prevent the storm, right? But if the universe is pissed at her living, then why isn't it pissed about William cheating death due to Max's intervention?

If it was just the timelines where William died but Chloe lived, I'd be like "alright, sure, Chloe cheating death caused the problem." But Willian's death being prevented doesn't do the same, so it's inconsistent reasoning at best.

Again, by the logic of the "Chloe being alive causes the storm" viewpoint, William should lead to that happening 5 years prior if he survives the day he's supposed to die, but that doesn't happen. If the storm is caused by Chloe being alive, then what does it matter which day she dies, so long as she dies before the storm is scheduled to happen? Unless you want to argue some divine punishment is occurring via a pissed off God, which would make the whole thing feel worse, then there is no logical consistency with the idea of "Chloe Alive = Storm, but William Alive =/= Storm."

It's by this logic that I think that the storm is tied to Max using her powers, rather than specifically the act of saving Chloe. This is then later reinforced, at least in part, by the sequel comics. Now, I know people will argue aren't canon, but they offer a look into a post "Bae" ending, and answer some questions about it in an official capacity, even if it's just meant to be a single view as to what could happen.

In those comics, Max's powers are tied to the storm, and are tied to her flickering between different realities, which lead her to a universe where Chloe and Rachel are alive and in LA for 2 years. She is later forced to confront another storm, and is able to prevent it from doing any damage, and then uses it to power a leap back to her original reality, albeit with the help of a guy who has the power to travel between dimensions, Tristian.

So in short, official media confirms that the powers are connected to the storm, and not necessarily Chloe's life. Max first uses her powers to save Chloe, sure, but the storm isn't linked to Chloe's fate by itself.

However, this is merely part of the justification I have for what I ultimately think is the "better" ending. The other is a simple question: how do they know that Max preventing herself from saving Chloe will stop the storm

Yes, we as the player, the outsider looking in, know that Max preventing herself from saving Chloe will lead to a Storm-less timeline, but in the scene where they decide that is what they have to do to stop the storm from happening, Max says that she caused the storm, and basically says it's due to her fucking with time. So how do they come to the conclusion her using her powers, the thing that caused the storm in the first place, to fix one more thing suddenly prevent the storm? Why would she even think that's a good idea when the consequences of her meddling with time are literally barreling toward Arcadia Bay?

In short, the metatextual element of this scene causes the internal logic of the choice to make no sense. If the use of powers causes the storm, then why would they even think using them again would fix things? If it's Chloe being alive, then William being alive should have done the same thing.

Basically, I think the issue with the ending isn't inherently the choice itself, but the logic for why the characters would even think a Hail Mary play like "go back in time and prevent yourself from saving Chloe in the first place" would even remotely work, given that they have two running ideas of the cause of the storm, and only one of them actually makes sense outside of a passing thought.

The issue with the "Bay" ending is that it leaves you with questions that have no good answers, but the "Bae" ending's questions are easier to answer.

In the "Bay" ending, if the photo jump is to the past where Max knows she can rewind time, even if only barely, then what's stopping that Max from abusing her rewind anyway? If the powers are the cause of the storm, then leaving her with the knowledge of it even being a thing is dangerous for the week leading up to Post-Photo-Jump Max's return, where that Max knows to not abuse her powers. Heck, if past-Max doesn't know of the rewind yet, and Photo-Jump Max knows that, then she can still save Chloe, and past her wouldn't know about the idea of time travel, so she'd not abuse the ability. Sure, there'd likely still be some kind of repercussions for messing with things, but it'd be significantly lessened if her powers are the cause of the storm, and not Chloe surviving.

So again, if Chloe's death has to be the thing that prevents the storm, why didn't saving William cause a storm? Why didn't Chloe dying to Jefferson at the end of Episode 4 stop the storm? If it's not Max's abuse of her powers that causes the storm, then what's stopping her from abusing the power in a Chloe-less world? We know thanks to the comics that she retains the ability to time travel after the week is done. Hell, if the "leaks" of an alleged Max-focused sequel game being in development are true, then it also confirms Max keeps her powers in a more concrete way than the comics did, so what's stopping her from abusing them outside of a sense of grief over losing Chloe?

I ask those questions because the act of letting Arcadia Bay get destroyed in the "Bae" ending doesn't highlight the issues with explaining how the storm came to be in the first place, and it ultimately could be either Chloe surviving when she should have died, or a consequence of Max abusing her powers during the week. It ultimately says "this is the cost of saving your friend. You made this bed, now lay in it."

The "Bae" ending reinforces the idea that Max shouldn't mess with time, and it shows the active consequences of doing so. It actively makes the "your choices will have consequences" thing the game shoves in your face at the beginning of every episode actively mean something, but in a way that isn't inherently obvious from the jump. From a metatextual standpoint, it's honestly really smart to have the idea of "choices and their consequences" be more of a theme rather than just a mechanic. Max ultimately has to live with the fact that her selfish desire to save her friend cost hundreds of people their lives, and she's not the only one who knows about that burden, because Chloe will have to spend a long time coming to terms with the fact that Max chose her over the lives of others when push came to shove. It ultimately feels like the journey meant something in the long term.

Conversely, the "Bay" ending just leaves me like "so there's no real consequences for anything, because this is how things would have played out if Max didn't have powers." Sure, Max has to live knowing her friend is dead because she wasn't allowed to save her, but she'd at least live knowing she did it for the greater good. It tries to say "this is the right choice" but fumbles because it ultimately just leaves people like me poking holes in the time travel logic. So long as she doesn't try to prevent someone's death again, she's free to use and abuse her powers however she wants. It doesn't reinforce the idea of "messing with things has consequences," it just lets Max have the ultimate do-over, where the only consequence that matters is her best friend is dead. She has to live knowing she let her friend die. At most, it's a tragic thing that will affect a few people, and that's it. To me, it just feels incredibly hollow.

Even if you like the "Bay" ending, I think you have to admit that the "Bae" ending has the time travel feel less problematic from a narrative logic standpoint. It, at the very least, doesn't require the answer to the question of "what caused the storm in the first place?" unlike the "Bay" ending, where it's left up in the air if it was Max's powers or Chloe's life that was behind it. From here, I'm going to basically go into some minor points as to why I think the "Bae" ending makes the most sense as the "canon" one for the series after the first game. These are not as important to the broader point, but still. If you wanna dip from the post now (assuming you made it this far) then cool, hope to see you when I talk about why I hate Before The Storm, cause that may interest people.

Some people like to suggest that the "Bay" ending has more potential for expansion, but I strongly disagree. That ending's future story potential, at least as far as Max is concerned, is just "Max has to learn to deal with the grief of losing her best friend" and otherwise has no real direction. If she meets Steph or something in a future game, for example, it ultimately will be a bit awkward for Max, and that's it. In the "Bae" ending, there's actual potential for drama if Max interacts with a former resident of Arcadia Bay, knowing she let it burn for the sake of one girl.

We can see how each ending effects David via the 5th Episode of Life is Strange 2. We know that regardless of Chloe's fate (at least as far as the two timelines that branch off from the first game's ending are concerned), David ends up in Away. David and Joyce split in the timeline where Chloe dies, and obviously Joyce died in the storm in the timeline where Chloe lives. We see how this effects David, but even then, there's more of a story to be told with Chloe surviving vs dying, at least in my view. Chloe and David being able to set aside their past issues and becoming the family Joyce had longed for them to become is a far more interesting story than David trying to reconnect with Joyce after Chloe's death split them apart. I'm not trying to suggest David is a great character or anything, but it's notable that Chloe and David's relationship is more interesting to explore in a post-Storm world, because he actually has a reason to become a better person in a Joyce-less world vs a Chloe-less one. It ultimately makes more sense for him to end up in Away because of Joyce's death rather than Chloe's. We see he really wants to be there for Chloe when he saves Max from the Dark Room, and we see how much Chloe's death affects him in that timeline, so I'm not saying he wouldn't relocate because of it if she died in the bathroom... but the drastic change he undergoes between Life is Strange and Life is Strange 2 really only makes sense in a world where he lost Joyce, and has to be better for Chloe's sake.

Steph is another character where it only makes sense to have Arcadia Bay get demolished, rather than have Chloe die. Sure, Steph is a very emotional character at her core, and runs from things that make her uncomfortable, no matter how good her life is going outside of that... but I honestly think it makes more sense for her to run from the past in a world where her hometown got levelled, because she'd have some kind of survivor's guilt because of the fact that she lived and her mom didn't. Yeah, she could still have survivor's guilt after learning both Chloe and Rachel died, but I'd argue it'd make more sense that she'd be running from Mikey in a world where the scars of Arcadia Bay run deep, rather than what happened to Chloe and Rachel. What reason would she have to avoid Mikey, her best friend, in a world where she doesn't have to feel bad that Mikey's family (presumably) died in the storm? In a world where her survivor's guilt would make talking to others from Arcadia Bay more painful and awkward for her? You could argue that, yeah, Chloe's death could hit her hard because they were good friends, and that because of Chloe being friends with Mikey too, that she'd avoid Mikey for that... but I just think it's more believable that she'd cut herself off from her past in a world where Arcadia Bay was destroyed.

Either way, this post and the time it took to write it got away from me, and I may have to refine it later when I eventually turn these essay type posts I've made into videos. For now though, hopefully this was an interesting read, and hopefully I've conveyed my views on the ending of Life is Strange's first entry at least somewhat succinctly.

[tyrantisterror]

Wizard School Mysteries: Book 2 Side Characters

Ok, the supporting cast expanded a lot in this book because of the tournament arc, but let's see if I can account for them all.

Actually, shit, first I have to go with two I forgot to add to the last batch, and pretty important ones at that. Zebul Blaa, the Dökkálfar/Dark Elf extra who ends up being part of the villainous plot in the first book. Dark elves in Norse mythology were born from the maggots that ate the giant Ymir's body, so in Midgaheim they're basically fly-people. Zebul himself is still in his maggot/larval stage of his life cycle at the start of the series, but as this concept art shows, that will change. He's got more to do in the overall story yet, so keep an eye out for him.

Laurel Creusa, meanwhile, is the student whose disappearance sets James on his whole mystery solving path. I tried to set up a red herring with her as well - James drops the word "tower" is his one conversation with her, which, given how the arcana are revealed in book 1, could have been taken as a hint that she was the final ally James needed to make in that book. But, alas, twas not to be - and I'm not sure if anyone fell for my ruse to this day.

Ok, back to book 2 proper. Professor Prospera Bubos and Professor Heka Tlancheb are the two teachers who are most responsible for the tournament at the center of the conflict in Tournament of Death, and it's fun because they're kind of polar opposites from the magic end of things - a professor of healing magic vs. a professor of combat magic - yet they both ultimately prove to be reasonable authority figures who protest the school turning an blind eye to how the students get hurt. Professor Bubos is loosely based on an alchemist character I drew ages back - mainly the big, pointy shoulders with prominent stitches. Meanwile Heka is just me being horny on main making fun of my own fondness for terrifying witch women.

We also get to see Professor Kobut Nyftek, who I think was mentioned in book 1 but not actually seen. They're one of the nicer teachers in the school, and costume-wise I took a lot of inspiration from Dr. Maruki's supervillain get up in Persona 5 Royal. There is... so much Persona in Wizard School Mysteries's DNA, way more than there is Harry Potter, and yet I know Harry Potter is the only thing it'll ever be compared to. A tragedy.

Simeon Helmschmied isn't a terribly complicated teacher concept - I just wanted to make him look like a badass, grizzled wizard blacksmith. D&D really popularized the idea of wizards not being armored and, like, I get it for mechanical reasons, but also I think some wizards deserve to also be heavily armored tanks.

Lacey Spidergrin is part of my ongoing attempt to sexualize Slenderman, and I think it's working gang.

As I said in the last post, before I enacted the grand plan to create a vast reserve of Spare Wizard Students, I plotted out a few supporting cast students based on alternate names for the Major Tarot Arcana. Godfrey Lionhardt and Columbina Paggliacci are based on alt names for The Magician - the Magus and the Juggler respectively - and loosely embody the traits of that card in turn, with flavorings based on the alt names they're given. A Magus is a more respected, princely equivalent of a magician - "Gift of the Magi" and all that - so Godfrey has a princely look about him. His last name, Lionhardt, marks him as being part of one of the noble houses in his home country of Bretonce, so he may well actually be a prince for all you know. Meanwhile, Columbina obviously takes the clown associations with "The Juggler" and plays them up to the hilt - which also allowed me to emphasize the fact that clowns are a monster species in my setting rather than just a job strange weirdos take.

I've mentioned how Joan Tatou is basically a collection of traits that Margot and Gretchen lost in the prewriting stages of the series, so I won't go heavily into that here. She's the Papesse, i.e. the High Priestess if she was more imperious and French. Wiglaf and Wagner, meanwhile, represent The Road and The Victory, which are alternate names for the Chariot - and also words that are used in a lot of descriptions of the Chariot, which makes them both feel like incomplete versions of it. That is to say, if you substitute The Road or The Victory for The Chariot in your Tarot deck, you're kind of specifically simplifying the meaning of the card. Which is why Wiglaf and Wagner are, like, just Margot's soccer hooligan fans - an extension of the Chariot, if you will.

Tinnea Lunae's prompt was "vampire who's primary animal form is a moth instead of a bat." She's trans, too, even if it hasn't come up yet. She, Titania, Sadie, and (eventually) Zebul work on the school's Newsparchment, What's the Buzz?

Grammy Crumblebuttons played a valuable role as a red herring in book 2, but her part in the narrative isn't over yet. Demented old women are too fun to write.

The Great Nyaa and Ursula Cobb are both animal-themed gag characters, but I like to think they're pretty distinct outside of that. Not that we'll know very much about the Great Nyaa given, you know, what happens in book 2.

Ok I think we can actually get to the contestants in the tournament now. Aldonza Dulcinea's outfit is specifically based on the movie outfits for Professor Umbridge. Her earlier designs were less good more generic wizard outfits, but by this point the "Let's spite the Terf Queen" streak in me was strong, and I thought it'd be fun to have a plus size character who's into pink and "girly" stuff not only be a hero, but an explicitly kind and beloved one.

I think my original concept for Breowyn was "what if a studio head forced me to tone down Margot's character concept to be more easily marketable." She's a warrior girl but, like, in the "kind of a tomboy" way that's socially acceptable instead of being a giant with a fucked up arm who looms over everybody. Ironically, I ended up really liking her design - I guess even a watered down Margot is still a fun character for me to work with.

Waldorf Brimli is, like, a wizard in the vein of the evil cult leaders in H.P. Lovecraft's stuff, and a student in the vein of those specific kind of nerds/geeks who are deeply misanthropic and antisocial under the excuse that they assume everyone hates them so they might as well hate everyone back. So, like, the kind of person who'd update the Chris Chan wiki, basically.

Gyrion Clodson is part of the "LOTR Gang," a subgroup of the Spare Wizard Students comprised entirely of Midgaheim versions of various sapient races from LOTR. Gyrion is our dwarf, though in Midgaheim dwarves are synonymized with gnomes.

My goal with Serena, beyond simply homaging magical girl tropes, was to have her be a "badass" character who's explicitly feminine - all her kickass offensive spells use pretty shiny crystals, she loves pink so much that her hair turned that color, she's very much a girly girl. So when I picked her opponents in the tournament, I wanted them to be various shades of masculine to contrast her, with three of them specifically underestimating her because of her feminine traits.

Margot's opponents (Shere Statchell included but not pictured here since she's in the previous post) are meant to play on different traits she has - Shere is has a physical disability (even worse than Margot's, since she fully lost her arm), Chungo and Eruz are both inhumanly large and somewhat ostracized for the danger people fear they present, and Sarkani is a wizard whose powers are distinctly ominous, even if she revels in that rather than trying to hide and restraint it like Margot. Sarkani also has an explicit dragon motif to go with Margot's more subtle one.

Next: alternate outfits!

[eponymous-rose]

It's a fairly busy week, and this kind of thing always helps me stay on-task - here's the day in a nutshell.

7am: Wake up (groggily) - I've found that I like having extra time in the morning, especially early in the week. Cuddles with Clara the cat, a little yoga (I have accumulated enough broken bones and scars that being totally sedentary means my whole body promptly turns to stone), shower, a nice breakfast and coffee while I catch up on work e-mails. A scientist from Switzerland who wants to do a two-year postdoc with me has sent me a document summarizing the research ideas we discussed at our last meeting! It's very neat stuff, and we're going to be putting together an application in the summer to get the full two years funded externally.

9am: Dry hair and set off to work! Manage to catch the 9:20 bus and have a chill commute to campus. Check e-mail again on my way into the building and realize our facilities manager has responded to an earlier e-mail, so I detour to his machine shop and chat a bit about the issue (I'm teaching an instrumentation class this quarter, and one of my students has been having trouble with her datalogger). He gives me a new USB cord, so I jog upstairs to try it out - no luck, just empty com ports and error messages galore :(. I also check out some of the hardware, but there are no suggestively bent pins or anything to give clues as to what's happening, and it looks like the console has stopped remote readings altogether. At a bit of a loss, I send him an update and head down to the lounge to get some hot water for my tea, then sit upstairs and quickly skim through the slides for today's lecture, which I haven't actually seen since last year. While I'm doing that, our facilities manager comes up with a fresh new datalogger and offers to configure it for me while I'm in class!

10:30am: Class goes well! We talk about some fun topics that are near and dear to my heart, and while everyone is a little on the shy and less-talkative side today, two different people are brave enough to confirm they got the right answer for the in-class exercise. Early on, the facilities manager comes in with the fresh datalogger, and I hand it off to the relieved student. Hopefully this does the trick! I get through my slides a few minutes early (probably because of the aforementioned quietness), which gives me time before my next meeting to quickly post grades for the students who gave an in-class presentation on Friday, as well as to link to the cloud recording of today's lecture.

11:30am: Research meeting! A colleague and I are co-advising an undergraduate research intern on a project we're seeking funding for (and have just hired a graduate student onto). She's progressing really nicely and just had a couple questions about a polar stereographic projection she was working on ("Is it meant to look that weird?" "Yes, absolutely."). We got her pointed in the right direction for the next couple of weeks, then raided my candy bowl and hung around a couple minutes chatting about how her classes are going. As she and my colleague leave, I see a message from the student with the troublesome datalogger confirming that the new one works! Whew. I send the victorious news to our facilities manager, with my endless thanks. The meeting wrapped up quickly, so I have time to munch on a protein bar (I usually pack a lunch, but I know I'm going out for a big dinner tonight) and enjoy my tea.

I'm a little nervous about a class I'm teaching next quarter - it's a really specialized grad-level class and if it gets fewer than 5 students, it gets canceled. Currently nobody is registered at all. On my colleague's advice, I put together an e-mail to all the grad students to let them know what the course has to offer.

I still have some time before my next calendar item, so I jump into the early stages of a scientific journal review due on Friday. It's a bit of an annoying process - it was originally rejected, and I got brought onto the resubmission when it was a long-ass paper plus 100 pages of replies to reviewers, and now we've made it through TWO MORE ROUNDS of reviews, so it's basically just a giant novel-sized mess of people yelling at each other. But it's gonna get done!

Just as I'm getting into the swing of things, two of my students pop by and stand in the hallway giggling nervously. Apparently they can't find their TA for another class and have a question about class material, so they figured they'd ask me instead - I gently redirect them to, you know, the professor of that course. "Yeah, but we're scared of him," they say, and I try not to die laughing with the knowledge that his wife is in the office next door to me hearing all this. Mixed feelings on this one - on the one hand, I'm glad my students see me as someone they can come to with questions. On the other, it's a time crunch on me that my old-white-dude colleagues don't have to contend with. They eventually head off in search of their professor while I go upstairs for...

12:30pm: Forecast briefing! We have weekly meetings for a national weather forecasting competition we're all in - it involves issuing 4 forecasts a week. I'm... okay at it (usually in the top quarter of competitors, at least beating the models), but we have some RIDICULOUSLY talented forecasters in our group. Today's briefing is entertaining enough, and we all squabble over where we want to forecast next week (the ~1000 participants vote on the city).

1:30pm: Research meeting! This one is with my most junior graduate student, who's a bit overwhelmed with coursework (the first year of our Master's degree is 9 extremely difficult courses before they finally get to do research full-time). We talk through it a bit and he asks for my advice on project/time management, so we chat about pomodoros, the Star Trek Scotty method (always give yourself a buffer and act as though things are going to take more time than they really will), and not writing the entire day off if you wind up doing nothing all morning - you can still hit a reset switch and have a busy afternoon if you need to. Just generally "be kind to yourself, because in the end the self-imposed guilt of not finishing something will stop you from progressing more than anything else." We also talk organizing code and avoiding hard-coding even when it makes the initial time investment much higher. It's a good chat, ending with some restaurant recommendations when he finds out I'm heading to his hometown this weekend! We wrap up early with some specific goals for the next couple weeks, and, after sending in my forecasts for the day, I get back to my review. I also order 5 lbs of candy to refill my candy bowls. It's been that kind of quarter. An e-mail comes in from a student interested in my course and asking for more info! She confirms she's probably going to take it, after consulting with her advisor. Heard from another colleague that she's got one student interested - two down, three to go!

2:30pm: Research meeting! How obvious is it that I like to front-load my week with meetings? This one's with a freshman undergraduate student who's started working with me as a research assistant on a new project... except the project we were originally going to work on together is going very very slowly (our collaborators at a different university are dragging their heels). He met with my PhD student a while back and got really interested in his work, and he apparently knows more than enough coding to be able to follow along, so I went ahead and got him access to 300,000 core hours and 1,000 GPU hours on a national supercomputer to do some exploratory data analysis. As you do. Tragically, the initial project also only works on PCs, and he's a Mac user, so that's another reason to pull him off one project and onto the other. Alas. The project he can't do is a SUPER appealing project to me (very repetitive, boring work that requires little brain-power - please let me do this from time to time!), so I might participate for the heck of it. Meeting ends a little early, so it's back to the review.

3:30pm: We're hiring! It's a dual hire with another department, so it's been a bit fraught, but the grueling two-day interviews roll on. This is number 3/5, so we're getting into the swing of things, and it's time to go attend the public seminar portion of the interview for this candidate. He is... absolutely astonishing on paper, like a once-in-a-generation kind of mind, so I'm already excited to see his talk. We'd be incredibly lucky to have him, although I'm not entirely clear on why he's leaving a super prestigious professorship two years in. I didn't get to schedule a one-on-one meeting with him since he has to leave earlier than expected tomorrow, but I'll be joining him for dinner tonight. The talk goes quite well, although I hear the students buzzing over whether he's genuinely collaborating or just doing the tech-bro thing of coming in and claiming to solve all our problems... Plenty to think about at dinner tonight. I believe this will be what the kids call a vibe check. (We also have a chalk talk tomorrow where he'll present his work to just the faculty + postdocs, so more chances there!)

5pm: Got some time to kill before heading over to dinner at 5:45. I was originally going to do some work, but my brain is a little fried at this point and I may just zone out and scroll for an hour. More tea! That'll solve everything.

5:45pm: Meeting a colleague to go grab the candidate and Uber over to the restaurant together - I love this place! Lots of good food, and plenty of non-alcoholic cocktails and veggie/vegan/gluten-free options, so an ideal spot to bring a guest speaker or faculty candidate. He was very pleasant to chat with and really knew his stuff despite having just had an exhausting day. Good food, good chats all around. Home by 9:30pm, phew.

[boilingpotfrog]

I know I'm a little late for day 3 of this challenge I made for myself, but I been busy with some life stuff and other projects I been planning along the way but that all I take about it now while until the next time I post but lets get start with the fandom we have for today.

🎉

ALSO SPOILERS FOR OF SWEET TOOTH

You finally get a uncle reveal!

So my plan was for this was what if they were animal hybrids? Wo7ld they be all on their own or have some sort of guardian figure like gus has? I decided to go with the guardians root since it would be more sad. So I thought that this will be a great introduction for Maitane, uncle Silvano. Mainly in his prime and glory, Note to be real I is the older brother of Maitane mom side. Mainly a detail is that Maitane was born when her mom was 18 while her uncle was 19. I don't know what age was Ramon when @queeniecore first drew him when he was a kid, but it my base is guide line whenever I spin a fandom and I going to make Ramon and Maitane as kids.

I had a hard time actually deciding what animal hybrid Maitane was going to be since she so fair it a trail and error in good way. I had to rewatch the sweet tooth since hybrids can bewild with how much animal traits can show in a hybrid child but then I remember the scene where Big man finds out that his son was a hybrid

This scene:

And I soon begin to think that it would be cool to see more hybrids was more clear animal features like animal legs so I use him as a guide and made her a goat hybrid, mainly perus national goat

This little silly.

Anyways time to get onto The Reall stars of this show uncle Silvano and Allen! Fuck the kids!

Silvano and Allen are pretty sure a nervous wreck with having to take care of kids, finding information on how to stop the virus from killing them or at least of to somehow cure it in some weird sense, making sure that their kids aren't going to get captured and experimented on and more. It got to the point the Silvano basically convinced Allen that if one of them started showing since of the virus that the other will go on and the one with the virus will be left to die alone. They do hold common ground on losing loved ones due to the virus and wearing something to remember them by. Allen being one of his wife necklaces while Silvano wears one of his sister's old scrunchies and wearing is brother in law (Maitane dad) Dog Tag necklaces.

They both probably met while Allen and Ramon were on the move, and Silvano did see that Allen had a Hybrid child with him just good old Allen and tried to shoot him so didn't meet on the best terms but it was all in the past. Silvano was more more of teaching Maitane of the outside world and got her head deep with pop culture and many other things while Allen took a similar approach like Gus dad did but them moving place to place and stay there just for a couple of days.

The both have kind polar personalities but one thing the will get Silvano to basically get him deep in a conversation is when Allen start kinda talking about his old job or of his life, science is a topic the Silvano basically married at a young age, he's happy married to Botany (The study of plants). He doesn't have the green thumb that his mom has but that doesn't mean that he couldn't just paint murals flowers to walls of random buildings. He still does it but it's small ones.

Allen doesn't really talk about his job much and more of his old life, he does miss how everything used to be from his old house to his wife. Allen had it worse, he's wife is dead and now he has a target on his back due to Ramon being a Hybrid. He wants to keep moving from place to place, is difficult to track down a target if they don't stay at one place.

Allen is basically the brains between him and Silvano, He is the one that runs away with the kids if things go south, He the one that plans how Silvano should attack. Silvano is a smart guy but that he relays on Allen for more smarter information. Allen is the reliable person between him and Silvano when it comes to decisions.

Allen and Silvano bud heads when it comes to certain situations like who the can trust, how much supplies they should use, how long they should stay at one place for, and even on the whole virus situations. Allen is a scientist but he is slowly realizing that if they were looking for a cure for the virus... how will they make it? They are nowhere near a functional lab and even if they were one of them will die from the virus before the even get close to making a milestone.

So they are ticking time bomb, just waiting for one of them to explode first.

[maeshelix]

I hope this isn't rude or offensive to ask, but how many of you are there? And what're your names? :3

Anon. My dear friend.

Not only is this not rude at all, but we've been looking for the perfect excuse to make a little introduction post about us since we found out we were we!!!

At least, I have lmao. And you just gave me that excuse right now let's goooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉

So!!! At the moment, there's about 10 of us, possibly 12??? Not sure yet, I'll let one of them edit this if I'm wrong and they exist lmao. But for now just operate on there being 10 peeps in here!!!

(Edit: It is actually twelve. Hello. I think I'll let Rokoko handle edits to the list proper though. She seems to enjoy that immensely-❤️)

(She seems to enjoy most things immensely lmao-💙)

More after the break (^-^)

First up on the list is meeeeeeeeee :3c Rokoko is the name and fun is my favorite game!!! I'm the resident clown-bot-girl of this particular system, a certified Delight here to spread joy and positivity in whatever ways I can!!! Usually through jokes!!! Though mostly because our body couldn't do half the shit I can do internally if we tried and also all of our friends are in completely different states and countries so we couldn't even hug or dance with any of them if I wanted to. And goodness knows I want to!!!

Next up is Salem!!!!!! My best buddy Salem!!!!!! She's basically the polar opposite to me lmao. She's a Protector who's perpetually tired and bitter cause the world kinda sorta sucks alot lmao. She's super sweet and kind if you get on her good side though!!! Which is harder then you think to get on but easier then you'd think!!! She's also a big tough werewolf girl who wants to look both cute and badass!!! Like a big metal spike wrapped in cute red ribbon ^_^

Next, there's Zero!!! She's a super cute robot girl like me!!! Except she's not really into the whole having emotions thing like I am. Like, she still has them (can't really completely avoid those while stuck in a human body after all) but she'd really prefer if she didn't, and she's told me that herself!!! Nonetheless, she's a logical and loyal little perfectionist AI who loves us just as much as we love her 💝💝💝. We're not really sure what her role within the system is (and honestly we don't really sweat it when it comes to roles in the system. Some of us know it instinctively but others don't and that's honestly fine!!!) But we know she's really witty and really smart!!! When she wants to be. She's also kind lazy, heehee :p

There's Daisy, who's a total sweetheart honestly. So much so that she's usually kinda sad and scared of the world around us which, fair lmao. She's a teeny tiny plant girl who just wants to be happy and loved and who's willing to help out in whatever ways she can. She's also adorable and again, soso sweet omgggggg you have no idea!!!

Marking the midway point of this list is Freesia!!! The suave moth demoness of our little family!!! She's an incredibly kind and loving woman who would probably help you move houses if you asked her to. I think she's a Caretaker??? Again, we don't really sweat labels here but it definitely fits with her in my opinion!!! She doesn't really come out often though, which sucks!!! @our brain, let the gal out every now and then she deserves time to herself!!!

Sleepy is next and we know basically nothing about her!!! Mostly because she rarely comes out, at least lately. Despite that though, we know that she's a big ol' goofball who says the most random shit sometimes and honestly, i love that aboit her (^ー^). Also fun fact!!! She's actually the one who originally tipped us off to being us in the first place!!! In that she was the first one to notice that she was different from whoever was in front at first one day and went "huh. Damn that's weird bro." I think she also miiiight controls when we feel especially ready to sleep (hence her name!!! I think. It could also be that she's just really really tired most the time, I honestly dunno!!!) so that's cool!!!

Next up, in no particular order, is Miranda!!! And next to Sleepy we probably know the least about her, except that she formed after a point in time where we played nothing but Elden Ring for like a month, after a particularly stressful point in our life!!! As such, she speaks like a fusion of Melina and Ranni and kinda looks like one too!!! With four arms and everything!!! She's really into fantasy media, and I'm sure she's gonna have a ball whenever we get around to playing Baldur's Gate 3 (let's be honest girls, it's an inevitability at this point, we just gotta pick the time lmao).

Heading up the rearguard is Hana!!! She's a super chill grill with attitude( ￣▽￣). Almost as much of a jokester as me, she's just focused on relaxing and hanging out. She's a kinda fictive??? It's complicated, and not for public speculation!!! All you need to know is that she's got multiple wings like an angel and is super into DOOM!!! She's the best I love her o(^o^)o

If you're looking for a definitive fictive, then F.E. is the girl for you!!! I don't think she wants me to tell you what she's a fictive of, so I won't say her full name, but like. She's not really subtle about it let's be honest lmao. She's the one who usually comes to front and takes care of our body whenever our brain is just far too exhausted (emotionally or otherwise) for any of us to use it!!! Or whenever we're on painkillers. Either or lmao. We actually thought she was also Zero for the longest time since they both kinda have a similar "emotionless perfect being" thing going on, though eventually F.E. found out she's definitely different from Zero and here we are now!!! She's a nice and steadfast gal with a little bit of a mischievous streak and she's also our latest split!!! I love her (^.^)

Last, but certainly not least, probably, is our girl Silver!!! Unlike F.E., Silver's pretty open about what her source is, that being Silver the Hedgehog!!! And I'd say she act an awful lot like the OG telepath too!!! If just a liiiiittle more nervous and anxious. She's an optimist, but she's also a realist, and she never fails to have hope for the future!!! In spite of the evidence to the contrary lmao. She also thinks she's been here the longest too!!! Here being our brain of course. Which I believe!!! Makes sense that we'd have a Silver fictive as a kid lmao.

And that's the list so far!!! We'll probably just edit and re-edit this list whenever something new happens in here so keep an eye out for that!!! And of you can't then don't worry, cause I'm pinning this to the top of our silly little blog lmao.

Again, thank you for the ask anon!!! And I hope you enjoy my answer as much as I did writing it!!!

[psychewritesbs]

What are your thoughts on Gojo's dynamic with Nanami and Utahime?

It seems that Gege listed some hints that Gojo may like them romantically but alas this was according to shippers themselves and it's unclear whether the official material was meant to interpreted that way or if it was just a funny thing thrown around. Regardless i just wanna add my cents here, the show really keeps denying that Gojo will ever be romantically interested in any of these characters asides from possibly Geto but at the same time it acknowledges that fans like various relationships so it feeds them these irrelevant crumbs. That's why i ask for your opinion on their dynamic, if you're comfortable answering this ofc!

HOLA ANON!

Listen... not only is my blog psychology-focused, there's a reason I have not really made any shippy posts about jjk. I've gone to town gushing about seisub, soma, kurofai and asucaga before. But those ships exist in old fandoms where there is a prevalent agreement and support about and for the ship.

jjk tho... the topic of shipping in jjk is a dangerous landmine regardless of who you ship for many different reasons.

That said, apologies if this wasn't your intention, but the way you worded your ask made it smell like bait from about three miles away, and I have been debating about what I want to say to you ever since I received it. Moots told me to just drop it but I found that I didn't want to drop it precisely because it feels like bait.

So basically, because 3 our of 4 moots I have shown your ask to agree that this is bait, I am going to respond in kind and will give you the least satisfying answer ever under the cut.

You have been warned...

jk anon, sorry for the click bait...

It's not that I'm going to give you a dissatisfying answer, it's that I don't want to participate in shipping wars 🤷‍♀️ and I feel like I am being dragged into one with this ask.

The truth is, I'm too old for shipping wars and avoid them like the plague to the best of my ability and for my own mental sanity... And one of the things that really gets under my skin is gatekeeping in shipping, which admittedly means I am probably being a hypocrite about it. Gotta work on that.

At this stage in my life tho, I am more interested in being able to both celebrate what I love instead of focusing on what I don't like, or on holding two contradictory truths at once rather than to take sides and claim one side is right and the other side is wrong.

To that point, lately I've heard a lot of people say it's not ok to be neutral. To that I say that polarized thinking is a sign of lack of experience and an unwillingness to be open to another point of view. I say this from experience, not because I'm judging anyone.

Been there, done that.

Like I was an idiot back in the day for thinking I couldn't like both Maya Sakamoto and Utada Hikaru. Like... what a clown 🤡 to think I HAD TO PICK ONE and could only like one of them lmao.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming you love stsg because of the way you frame the ask around how Geto seems to be the one person whom Gege hints at being the most likely that Gojo would be "romantically interested in".

On the other hand, you also tell me that shipping Gojo with other characters is based on what looks to you like irrelevant breadcrumbs.

Now, before I keep going, what follows is my personal opinion, and I do not claim to own the objective truth about this topic.

In fact, I am very aware that there is no right answer to your ask, and that whatever I answer can stir unnecessary shit up because, not only is this topic sensitive because that's the state of shipping in jjk fandom, but the ask itself feels like its baiting me to give an answer someone knows they aren't going to like.

Very machiuvelical of you anon 😏 I see you!

So either I'm paranoid af, or you're not very good at pretending you are genuinely confused because "it's unclear whether the official material was meant to be interpreted that way or if it was just a funny thing thrown around".

Come the fuck on... 😂

First, you sent an ask to someone who understands mind games; and second, it's perfectly ok to say you don't like the other two ships.

But again, I have also said things in a way that was misinterpreted by others, so... benefit of the doubt here.

Thing is, if you love stsg, no one can take that away from you. Trust me, no one needs anyone's opinion to love ANY ship.

So, let's start with the hard stuff up front.

I ship stsg

I don't care if they are or aren't canon.

If others want to have this conversation and pull panels to back up why they think they are canon etc etc, good. This is not a conversation I care to have any longer because I realized I don't need Gege, or anyone for that matter, to tell me it's ok to ship a pairing--more on this later.

If you do, then, yeah, that's relatable and very understandable.

I also don't care if the jjk powerscaling bros can't accept that Gege has baked ambiguity into the dynamic, and that the cursed cat has recommended bl manga TWICE--thus hinting at the idea that Gege enjoys reading bl.

AND I also respect that there are those who truly see them only as friends. That's their business, you know? Why does their opinion matter if I ship them?

But, when I put on the rose-colored fujo glasses, I see it.

It's undeniable.

stsg is the jjk version of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle's kurofai.

But to be frank... I disagree with the idea that any evidence pointing at gjhm are "irrelevant breadcrumbs" that "shippers are throwing around".

Are they breadcrumbs? Yes. There isn't a whole lot of canonical evidence. But I also don't often hear gjhm shippers say things like "they're so canon" although I could be wrong.

So, are people throwing breadcrumbs around to be funny? This frankly makes it sound like you think very lowly of how some people choose to interpret certain panels.

Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt, this kinda sounds like you see yourself as better than... ?? because to you, its "unclear" how people can interpret the text as there being any ambiguity about the dynamic.

No it isn't 😂. It's clear as day. Come ooooooon.

Its ok to not like that Gege hinted at it AND it also doesn't make stsg any less important.

So are the breadcrumbs truly irrelevant? Only if you have an agenda.

Again, I am sorry if this isn't your intention, but calling them "irrelevant breadcrumbs" makes it sounds like there's an agenda geared at denying something you don't agree with. Which is SUPER relatable.

What I'll say is that, from the "breadcrumbs" Gege gave us about gjhm, I got the sense that, if there was some sort of romantic involvement between Gojo and Utahime that Gege is hinting at in the subtext, it was very bittersweet.

I'm totally not feeling like going and doing any research about this because there are plenty of gjhm shippers who have stated why the "breadcrumbs" make sense to them. AND I also think it's undeniable that there was something between them given the whole song lyrics related to her ct blablabla.

Denying this makes it sound like you're cherry picking what you think is and isn't subtext in the official work based on your shipping preferences.

Also, I don't personally ship gjhm but I have moots who do. As I said, I ship stsg AND I can also respect that others ship gjhm because two opposing ideas can coexist.

Anyways, with ch 236 in mind, in retrospect, what made gjhm undeniably bittersweet, was that Gojo was emotionally stunted in his teen years. This makes Gojo emotionally unavailable to ANYONE because he was stuck longing to be understood the way Geto once understood him, while simultaneously making himself hard to understand.

I think that if Gojo and Utahime were involved behind the scenes, this doesn't mean he didn't miss Geto or stopped loving him. The way I see it, he could very well have loved both. But again, that's my interpretation. It sounds like yours is different.

To me, Utahime isn't some sort of impediment for Gojo to love Geto and viceversa. This isn't a love triangle--Geto isn't even in the picture in their adult years.

That, and, the idea that we can only ever love one person is an unrealistic byproduct of the psychology of romantic love. And yet I can also understand why Gojo felt understood by Geto the most. I mean... Geto is the first person he sees when he dies.

This is so... beautiful.

So if you take the song lyrics hinted at in Uta's ct and put yourself in Utahime's shoes from the perspective of a gjhm shipper, you have a woman who is in a relational dynamic with someone who can't be present for her because he isn't present for himself to begin with.

I know you unironically think it's "a funny irrelevant thing being thrown around", but from how I'm interpreting this, that's not irrelevant or funny to me.

It's human tragedy, and it's sad af for all parties involved. And if you don't agree, you don't agree and that's ok. We can both agree to disagree.

Now, this is how I interpret gjhm based on that ONE specific breadcrumb. Which again, is anything but irrelevant unless your goal is to minimize someone else's perspective. For all I know, a gjhm fan reads this and doesn't agree with me.

For the record, I'm not saying you should change your mind about gjhm if you don't like the ship because you think Utahime truly hates Gojo's guts or that it's misogynistic to pair her with a man but perfectly ok to ship her with Shoko because somehow that makes it ok for her to be in a romantic relationship with someone else, or whatever reasons you might have.

I'm saying that you can love stsg AND simultaneously understand and respect that someone else would have a different opinion, even if you don't personally agree with it.

As for Nanami and Gojo... I mean... 🤷‍♀️

I guess if I put the fujo glasses on I can sort of see it. But again, why should anyone care about whether I agree with them or not? Like... when did I become the authority on shipping? 🤷‍♀️

I don't want that responsibility.

But, the most important thing I want to get across here, is that shipping is highly personal because there is a certain degree of self-insertion happening when we "ship".

So if you, or anyone for that matter, loves stsg, it's because you can see something about the dynamic reflected back at you that rings true to you.

You might say, "it's not that deep, I just see the official text and like what I saw." Which is also fair. But if it wasn't that deep, this ask wouldn't be something I was answering right now.

So, that's why to me, for MY answer to YOUR ask with the way it feels like bait, it's irrelevant whether the ships are canon or not. All that matters is that you, as a participant in this piece of media, can relate to the dynamic. And this is not to minimize whether "the official material is meant to be interpreted one way or another".

But again, cherry picking what we want to be subtext based on an agenda is a biased take.

All I am saying is that shipping is highly personal.

Again, if you don't like the "boy picks on girl" dynamic that gjhm has, it's because it's not for you. I have read what others have to say about not liking it and, honestly, good on y'all. Makes sense.

And if someone explains to me why gjhm makes sense to them, I am no one to tell them they are wrong to self-insert into this dynamic and explore what its potential means to them.

So, anon, I would much rather hear about why you love stsg.

If you want to talk to people who want to focus on hating gjhm or gojonana, or discussing why it's "funny irrelevant breadcrumbs thrown around", for whatever reasons you might have, I simply am not the right person.

All of this said, any further comments seeking to minimize any ship shall be ignored because I am not interested in contributing to shipping wars.

Enjoy stsg. It's a beautiful ship!

Thanks for stopping by, and sharing that bit of stsg love you did share with me. Again, sorry if I misinterpreted your intention, and if I didn't... idk.

All the love.

[xplrvibes]

It is interesting how people treat Colby and how people treat Sam.

I mean Colby is generally the more liked, popular and more beloved of the duo HOWEVER he gets oversexualised and basically treated like a disgusting man whore by the fandom like he's some kind of k-pop star who's signed all the clauses not to do all that stuff when he hasn't and he's doing perfectly normal behaviour for a man of his age (and it really is none of our business what his sex life is like so it's truly disgusting how obsessed with it people are)

Meanwhile on the other side, Sam gets none of the cross examination of his sex life stuff but he gets way more hate in all other aspects across all social media (i've seen so many posts saying truly horrible things about the man, from just insulting his looks, to saying how awful a person he is, to saying he's a terrible friend, to saying Colby doesn't need him etcetc). And half the time the hate he gets doesn't even make sense? I'm like 'at least give good reasons to hate the man?' He's also less popular and generally ignored by the fandom and I've often seen him referred to as the 'spare'. So all this is very weird to me, I don't think I've seen another fandom duo where the duo gets the same bad treatment as these 2 men. (It amazes me that SnC still like their fandom honestly considering how shitty a lot of the fans are).

But one thing I note from this is how it's understandable that neither of them are particularly active anywhere anymore when they both get a lot of hate (for different reasons) and harassment from crazy fans. Honestly I don't think I would want to be either one of them, cos one is ignored and hated for no reason, the other if overly sexualised and harassed and cross examined constantly in regards to his sex life, neither of those options sound fun to me, lol.

While I agree with you that Colby is the more popular and more oversexualized of the duo, and that Sam generally tends to be overlooked or more left to the shadows, I have to respectfully disagree on the hate thing.

While Sam does occasionally get barbs thrown his way, and people say rude things sometimes, nothing has ever or could ever hold a candle to the way Colby is treated. Colby has a very polarizing and unique experience with internet fame, in that he has the highest of highs, on the most extreme side of the love spectrum...but with that comes some of the ugliest lows I've ever seen anyone get.

I'll give you a handful of examples that I have readily available of the real disparity between the way the two are treated, below the cut (these are just off the top of my head things that I have available, not even a full list of everything that goes on):

Only one of these two men have gotten multiple viable, detailed, and fandom sanctioned and even celebrated public death threats...and it wasn't Sam.

Colby was once literally sent a public death threat so vile that he straight up left social media for over a week directly because of the hit it took to his mental health. You know what people did with that info? Created "tea room" accounts again and again with the express purpose of posting it around, and continuously tagged him and all his friends in it until Sam had to intervene and ask them to stop.

The death threat was still one of the ugliest things I've seen on the fandom side of the internet, and no I'm not re-posting it. Just know that it marked a turning point in how Colby interacted with fans that hasn't been course corrected to this day.

There was another occasion where he wound up trending on twitter because "fans" were telling him to kill himself over some silly little Twitter drama or another, and the whole thing got so out of control that it wound up being reported on Def Noodles.

He had his journal stolen in SF and posted about it, and people were literally tagging him in shit telling him he deserved it and that it should've been worse.

Do you know how many times Colby had to trot out the notes app and do the apology tour on twitter because he did such aggregious things like wished women a Happy Women's Day, said he didn't like stick figure art, went for a walk on Jan 6th, the whole "queerbaiting" saga (which ONLY Colby caught flack for, btw...Sam participated in that shit too but not one person came at him tooth and nail over it. He also, btw, let Colby out to dry for that one as well)? There was a point in time where the only time he was ever on twitter was to apologize for something that only he was getting straight up hate for....cause sorry, but I don't think telling someone to kill themselves over something is "calling someone in" or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Sam wasn't posting about the Jan 6th riots either, Sam never spread a single piece of misinformation about [insert event here], but only Colby was sent hate and vitriol over that.

There was a period about 3 years ago where Colby spent about 20 minutes pretending to be dating Amber Scholl. Both she and Colby immediately started getting death threats, to the point where he had to make a video addressing and apologizing for pretending to have a girlfriend for less than a day.

A few months later, Sam and Kat spent a MONTH pretending to be engaged to prank their fanbase. The response they got? "Oh haha, you silly gooses, you got us good! What a fun prank, thanks for that!"

Here's an email Colby got when he committed the cardinal sin of growing out a mustache:

TW for the below screenshots, they are vile:

Here's a couple comments I saw recently while casually taking a look at Colby's cancer free post from people wishing he had straight up died from the cancer (I've seen countless other comments like this across instagram and tiktok; I shudder to think what's being said on twitter). I didn't even have to scroll for these. They were right on top. Im sure if you scroll, there's more:

There are fan accounts on other social media sites that will tag Colby in shit regularly, calling him stupid, calling him a whore, going after his looks. They've boiled him down to the dumb hot one: a bag of meat and sinew with a pretty exterior and nothing inside, and then they shame him for the looks when they've already got hom thinking that's all he brings to the table. He grows a mustache? He's an asshole. He gains 5 pounds because of medical issues (or for any reason, really)? He's now fat and ugly. He got acne, how fucking dare he get acne, I never liked him anyway especially now that he's ugly. He stops dyeing his hair, or dyes it a color they don't approve of? High treason.

The fandom treats him like a character in their little Sims game that they can control and puppeteer the way they want him, and they also treat him like their little punching bag at the same time. He's their little y/n fantasy, but only if he fills the pre-requisites and doesn't step even one toe out of line.

They definitely ignore and overlook Sam sometimes. They definitely say some rude shit about him, too, here and there. But overall, the fans that do acknowledge Sam treat him like he's a human being, which is already stratospheres away from how they treat Colby on either side of the spectrum.

If I were given the choice? I'd prefer not to walk in either of their shoes, lol. But, if pressed, I'd walk a mile in Sam's shoes easily. I wouldn't even look at Colby's, let alone put them on.

Now, does it all even out? Colby gets a hell of a lot more love and attention overall, yes. Is it worth the death threats and the hate and the constant meddling into your life to the point where you're having nervous breakdowns over it? I don't know that it is.

Is it better to spend your life playing second fiddle to someone like that, but to also not have to deal with the constant scrutiny and the death threats? I don't know, I guess it depends on prerogative. Either way, to your last point: this is definitely why neither one of them are a heavy presence on social media these days, and fans have nobody but themselves to blame for it.

[bitty-bits]

A Jolly SineTrismas

It surely was another year. Let's look back at some stuff, and forward to other stuff, in the final Bitty Bits edition of 2022.

First of all, happy holidays to all who celebrate. Yeah it is a bit late on the "more famous holiday" side of things, but there are still others going on, and... in general it's probably never wrong to be festive during all of December. (It's also not wrong to NOT be festive! Just pointing that out!)

Many things happened in this late half of the year, controversial things, stupid things, all things. Here I will talk about some that mattered to me, to some extent.

(Also, RIP bozo...naro! Good riddance!)

This issue is dedicated to @rick-666, friend and avid newsletter enthusiast who encouraged me to try to fix the broken ass email form thingy that should actually send these posts as newsletter things but just isn't working! I'll have it fixed next year, I promise!!!!

My Work - Where To Next?

So I've made and tried to make many things through the years, but as someone who pretty much does anything all the time, I'm finding myself often doing... nothing at the end of it.

In 2020 I basically started work on Ketchup Dreams by making its first characters, Bitty and Lake, with more to follow the coming years... but still nothing too substantial. Pondered with which medium to present these characters in. Comics? Animation? In the end I'd just continue adding some things here and there to the overall project, but it still doesn't seem like enough. I really want to build a good universe for these guys to live in.

So at the moment I feel kinda directionless. But hopefully that will change. I guess I won't know what sticks until I actually do stuff.

From Bitty also came the entire aesthetic, motif, symbol, meaning AND name for, I guess you can call my "indie" studio/group/label thing... which my future creative works will be released under, and who knows maybe even friends' creations. The "ᑎᐱ" thing was kind of accidental, but I liked it enough that I wanted it to mean something for me. Not to sound corny and dumb, but to me "ᑎᐱ" is kinda like another representation of the polarity we have in life, much like black and white, but in this case it would be something like... smooth and sharp. Yeah I'm not gonna try to give too much meaning to it, it's just for fun, mostly. Bitty's ears initially were meant to just be bunny + kitty ears (hence the incredibly original name) for an asymmetrical design, but that basically spiraled into everything else.

All that said I'm still doing stuff every now and then, I even have been experimenting with tweaking Lake's design slightly, you can even see a little bit of that in the header art here. More on that some other time...

You can check the current "roadmap" for Studio SineTri projects on the pinned tweet.

Why not "TriSine" instead? Because that just... sounds too normal. "Tri" is an existing and common prefix. Also the order matters.

The Tesla In The Room

I don't think I need to talk much about the whole thing with Elon Musk buying Twitter and everything that came with it. Mostly I'm just tired of it all. Billionaires, other than beings that shouldn't exist, are Boring and not even in a funny kind of way (except for Bill Gates, his mere existence is comedic to me probably thanks to early internet culture) I wish I just didn't have to hear about 'em. But I guess we can't.

Anyways this entire situation practically got me back into being on Tumblr daily, after I had left it in favor of Twitter in like 2015, and now... the opposite is happening, that's just how sick I am of Twitter. Not just the website itself but the people in it and the energy that usually comes out of there these days. Musk was simply a final nail in the coffin. The problem is... he just keeps adding more nails. Here's hoping Elon doesn't ruin the very last thing that made Twitter "fun" to me - TweetDeck, but chances it'll survive are slim.

I'm also on Mastodon btw. Juuust in case.

AI Art Discourse - What's Happening?!

"A Still of Klonoa in The Simpsons"

Speaking of Twitter, probably one of the least pleasing topics to witness over there lately will be this.

No doubt, "AI art" as a concept pretty much exploded into popularity in 2022, while it already existed in concept years before, this was pretty much the one year that, 5 years ago, we'd look at machine learning attempting art and say "now just think about how that'll be 5 years from now", and well, that time IS now. Kinda.

There's legitimate worry about whether or not the computer would be able to replace artists, but... personally I don't think it will ever BECAUSE... there will still always be a demand for humanity and human-created content no matter how good any sort of AI gets, and well, currently AI still struggles with "drawing" many things. But it's fine, earlier this year people were mostly memeing with AI generators, being impressed, confused, having a laugh, or everything all at once.

Until computers making drawings suddenly were no longer seen as cool but rather, bad!!! evil!!! problematic!!! etc. even though the reason for that all stems from... misconceptions and misinformation (sometimes on purpose, just because... I dunno. Internet rewards people who get angry at things.) about how the technology works to begin with. No, AI doesn't simply collage a bunch of pictures together, that just isn't how it works, even if it knows what a Mona Lisa looks like almost perfectly. It's hard to put it into words, but this thread I believe explains it a bit better in simpler terms (hopefully), even if you still don't understand, it's... best to not be too ignorant about it.

Of course, I DO think AI ethics is an important conversation that should happen, but not if it's... not gonna be a conversation in the first place. If it sounds too extreme, reactionary, or sounds just about as crazy as anything you'd hear coming from Alex Jones or like, your pro-life uncle™, then it probably isn't the way to go.

This made even people who think photography isn't art come out of their closets, if they even were in one.

There are good use cases for AI in art. One of them is allowing disabled individuals to also partake and experiment with visual arts. Yes, technically nothing "stopped" them from "really" doing it, but just look at how much that argument almost slips into ableism territory (and there is a surprising amount of that coming from some anti-AI folks.) Hell, I could've used AI to create a background for the art on my header as I'm mostly... a character illustrator, focused on characters, and just don't really enjoy drawing backgrounds much at all.

Anyways I recommend y'all check out AWAY (Are We Art Yet), a collective of artists and creators alike embracing AI but also fighting for more ethical AI usage (discussion about scraping images from the web, consent for works to be used as training data, etc.), without the reactionarism and sometimes ableism. They're a friendly bunch.

What I’ve Been Playing / Watching

Gravity Falls

Well, does it really?

Hey Kids, Have You Heard Of Gravity Falls? The show's 10th anniversary was this year and, having heard mostly only good things about it since then, AND as someone who had recently been sucked deep into the modern Disney TVA pipeline (DuckTales 2017, Amphibia and Owl House are also great and would also recommend), I made it a goal to watch all of it before the year ends.

At first I thought this, like other very successful shows, would have way too many seasons for me to really get into, so I was surprised when I found out that wasn't the case.

It's definitely a great show, even 10 years later. From what I saw very little of it comes across as dated when it comes to references or jokes, the characters being likable and interesting are about enough to hook you into it I think. Also Matt Chapman is in there a lot and as an avid Homestar Runner fan, you can just Tell not only through his voices, but his humor and vibes entirely in some episodes.

If there's one thing I probably can't get enough of is Disney cartoons made by some of the most... Non-Disney people on Earth.

The Dream I Had On December 25th

Usually I share my dreams on Twitter, but decided it might be neat to feature some of the more interesting ones right here. They are an essential part of one of my creations after all. This year though, for a reason or another, I had less eventful or weird dreams in general. But waking up on Christmas day this is what was on my mind:

For more of my dreams you can check out my dream journal with stuff since at least 2014, here.

I had a dream I can split up in three parts - first I was at an old house of mine but I could hear a new trailer for the Mario movie premiering far outside, a classic game song could be heard in it and things pointed to it being a Daisy reveal.

Second part was a Strong Bad thing, where I possibly interact with him directly and actually cause a change to homestarrunner.com "accidentally". He makes some sort of analog horror parody, and an old main page gets a new "feature" permanently. I felt a sense of realization since "I caused this". I really wish I remembered more cuz it was great

Third part is the one I can recall the most, it was what seemed like a weird Gravity Falls AU type thing, which is slightly mixed up with The Owl House - In what appears to be the first episode, Grunkle Stan is nowhere to be found, with probably Eda taking his place as the twins' "Graunt". The episode begins with Mabel just wandering around the forest, when she comes across several typically good luck signs all at once, things like four leaf clovers and such. Eda knowing better knows it's a trap and tries to protect Mabel, but she is convinced that Eda is a witch (which probably Should be a secret at first in this alternate timeline I guess, Eda Is Not What She Seems™) and EVIL!!! and ignores her, acting hostile towards her, even, so Eda locks her up in a shelter. Perfectly normal. In there she finds… a journal. It doesn't appear to be -the- GF journal but rather a mix of that and Philip's journal from Owl House. At first it looked like the journal could talk by itself but someone just happened to be there in disguise, it was Soos, who happens to know a couple things about the journal but probably not much. For some reason I was "watching" it in Portuguese and they'd give him a completely different name, likely starting with a hard C, but I can't remember now. Some weird magic thing happens too which I don't remember how it's triggered or when exactly in the episode progression it even happens but it would make food and candy "infinitely stretchy", where you could essentially have infinite amounts of something just by stretching them, and it caused children to go insane over it. Eventually Soos and Mabel made it out of the shelter, with the latter no longer feeling suspicious about Eda. That's about what I can recall.

Song of the Issue

I will now feature some cool music (probably just vgm) I like here, just because. Sometimes topical, sometimes not.

But today it might be.

A secret easter egg track, on the older 2008 MIDI version of the Charlie (the Duck) II soundtrack (that probably came into existence together with the 2008 Windows version of the game, as opposed to the original DOS version which much like other Wiering Software games only had sound effects, at most.)

It would only play on Christmas day, and was basically a slight arrangement of the proper theme, but with some classic Christmas tunes thrown into it.

The OGG/streamed version you hear on the Steam release cuts the song a bit shorter.

More Stuff

Audicons Fluent/2.0/Name Pending

Inspired by Microsoft's Fluent Design aesthetics and technicalities, this will be an update to my existing icon pack for audio formats, covering even more obscure formats that only 3 people know about! Just like the old pack, this will be fully compatible with probably any version of foobar2000. Very soon!

Ninjin on Archive.org

Yeah!

juke...box. AI. video.

yeah dude.

(no, seriously, it'll come out when it comes out. that's it.)

Miscellaneous Tumblr Side Things

I dunno, I just felt like... having a couple dedicated side blogs for specific interests, as some people do, cuz I have ideas. One of them will be about brazilian animation in general. Nothing fancy or scheduled, just things that will exist.

Conclusion

The more I write the more self-conscious I get that I might just be shit at writing Anything, but I still appreciate if anyone actually likes reading through!

Stay tuned for the traditional yearly dumb highlights collage pic™ on my main Tumblr (@lu9) and Twitter (if it's not completely broken by then...)

Bitty's Message of the Day

My new year's resolution is to Exist more!

[the-rodent-of-shalott]

@grungekitty-77 I have a story that I think relates to this, and tangentially to another post about how calling out members of a community / minority doesn't actually mean you think EVERYONE in that community is bad.

Long rambling post ahead, sorry! My apologies to the OPs in question if this reads as unrelated rambling - your posts just gave me the language to fully process and reflect on this hobby space anecdote.

Anyway - the preamble. A few years ago I found myself being bombarded with polarizing posts and videos of all sorts of topics with different sides yelling at each other on social media, everything from 'are vegans evil, are omnivores evil', to 'interracial relationships are wrong, interracial adoption is wrong', and the ever-ready 'white people are demonic and should pay reparations because slavery happened'. This was (and is) very disheartening to witness, so in my frustration at the time I put together a DNI for my tumblr description which stated that I do not want interaction from anyone who proposes that caucasians are racists by default, that reparations should be a thing, if you think men can't be victims of domestic abuse, non-vegans hate animals, media and fiction should be censored etc ' It was pretty much a blanket DNI for radical beliefs and discourse of any kind to protect my mental health, and it sat there peacefully for three years.

Until I ended up on a roleplay drama confessions blog in the roleplay community here on tumblr (yes, I know, old woman with hobbies, haha). At the time of me following, I at first had the impression it was a relatively peaceful blog for getting things off your chest related to this hobby, however I soon realized that was not the case once I saw that every reply to every confession gets posted, having the blog quickly descend into petty flamewars and witchhunts over which roleplayers, opinions and ad blogs are bad, don't post quick enough or post the wrong things, the use of epithets in writing, the morality of monsterfucking...Pretty much every day was a new drama and followers openly, repeatedly admitted they enjoyed it being that way. I once stood up non-anonymously for a friend of mine who was getting hassled, because I wanted her to have encouragement during a hard time in her personal life, and to see that people are willing to defend her. This put a target on my back. I was now 'cringe' for protecting a 'cringe' friend and, of course, people also found the DNI on my blog. I was suddenly an 'ugly racist', and blocked by more people in a space of days than I have been in over a decade of being on this site. I'm not sure how to tell you this, but if you think ALL people of color are ALWAYS right about everything no matter what and ALL white people are ALWAYS wrong (and that even monsterfucking is racist and I am DEFINITELY racist for agreeing with a user saying it isn't), then you are the problem and are indirectly contributing to the racial divide and the ongoing anger of the far-right. I understand not wanting to discriminate and think it's admirable. But -

I'm disabled. If we apply the 'disadvantaged / minority peoples are always right and should be believed and not questioned', then by that logic you should also not be able to question me - because I'm disabled. But that is the wrong conclusion to draw. You should be able to question and dislike me. I DO think that white guilt, opposing interracial relationships and adoption and any such adjacent rhetoric dangerously advances the racial divide, and I DO think people should be judged by individual merit rather than statistic markers like race, gender, nationality, economic standing, etc etc.

Where has moral judgment based on these external markers led us before? ''Who's going to believe you, you're a man [for male victims of abuse] woman / child / poor / black / a jew/ trans / disabled / mentally ill?'' We've been there before, we are largely still there now in varying degrees across the globe - do we really want the pendulum to swing all the way back around? The way forward is in unity, not division. Otherwise, what natural conclusion is the 'white vs black' rhetoric going to lead to? Happy interracial couples breaking apart underneath the weight of ''morally right'' white guilt? Adopted black children being taken away from loving white parents and returned to the foster system? Furthermore, the idea that people of color are always right is, in itself rooted in racism. Black people / mixed people / Asians (and the LGBTQ, disabled etc) are not a monolith all sharing one thought and experience, and to default assume a black or gay person's opinion and / or devalue it as 'wrong' if it somehow differs from X, Y, Z other opinion, is, in itself, racist. So which POC / gay person has the ''correct, good'' opinion among the natural multitude of opinions? We've reached a point of ''social quick consumption'' in which a person's appearance often quickly creates assumptions about their character and beliefs - something completely antithetical to racial equality as it's basically racial profiling 2.0. It's all too often that I've seen and heard about minorities receiving vitriol and accusations of bigotry online and in traditional media (including from other POC!) because their opinion does not fit the current mainstream in some way. You can't shame someone into being [your idea of] a good person, and sometimes people are just dicks, and sometimes the dick person is a minority. I love people of color - that doesn't mean I love every person of color [or insert other group / community here] - and that should not be a controversial take. Cancel culture and the fear around it [cancel or be canceled, and be thought of as a bad person] has become a death march to nuance, but don't let it be the death toll of critical thinking skills.

Everybody can be a dick! I'm a dick sometimes too! Everybody can be great! No one is, or should be deemed to be right or wrong by default every time all the time! That's equality!

As for me, I've gained insight on what kind of hobby spaces I'd rather avoid, and perspective that has made me realize my frustration from years ago perhaps made the DNI on my blog sound too needlessly oppositional and hostile. :)

And yes, by all means, you can still dislike me!

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

[castlebyersafterdark]

why do you think the top/bottom debate for byler is so intense and polarized?

I think it's just so common in any fandom with a gay ship. I'm really not sure what the obsession over the debate is from but I have theories? I've never been involved in any anime fandom, but throughout the years, those fandoms dominate the internet sphere and (even if you have zero connection to any anime/mange media, the fandom trends in those spaces do infiltrate and influence the nerd/fannish corners as a huge factor, even along the far-away edges). Top/Bottom is a huuuuge fight and designation in a lot of those stories like as a trope (ooh I forget the terminology! i know there's something specific it's called!). But then, people want to apply that tropey mindset to fandoms and characters where that's not applicable at all? I was in the IT fandom for a little while and oh my god, this argument happened constantly and it was honestly super annoying! (At least in the IT fandom though, when I was there, there wasn't this anti-sex mindset for the characters, so the top/bottom debate feels quaint compared to byler haha. Maybe it was because the source material... well... iykyk).

It could just be an unfortunate side effect of short-sighted fandom people having to force gay ships into what they feel are m/f roles in the bedroom because that's easy and familiar to them. BUT ALSO gay culture surrounding sex does often fall into strict top/bottom roles. Like it is a pretty big deal for a lot of people. There's a lot of guys who only ever perform one role during sex and honestly, they're content to never switch it up and only want it one way which is super realistic and totally valid. But there's plenty of vers folks here as well 😉

The problem I find is that these debates happen around fictional characters who are usually not shown having sex and if they are, are not depicted with a set preference. So why are we fighting about it in fanfiction? It's not real. You can literally make your argument and write what you want and people don't need to get that upset about it. It's not about designating top and bottom and having a preference - it's the fighting on and on about why one would never do it a certain way or one has to be something. Just write your fic. Make your head canon posts. Read what you want.

Byler itself??? I've seen folks plead their cases for each iteration of Will as a top/bottom and Mike as top/bottom and honestly - if you write them well and make sure their characterizations and personalities are accurate, you can do whatever you want or like. I personally do have my preferences, but I read every combination and love reading every combination. I think it's kind of odd when folks get upset about a piece of fanfiction and won't even entertain reading a certain position and get angry that it was even written (and esp when they decide to tell the author? Like it's not that serious, please be kind).

Sometimes I've seen folks really try to 'over-correct' when it comes to both characters. Like with Will genuinely falling into a few 'gay stereotypes' or having trauma, he's portrayed as a top to challenge or compensate for these things. And I don't think depicting Will as a top is a bad thing, I just think for those reasons and those alone it's kind of not interesting to me. Same with 'Mike has to be the bottom because he's a brat and he needs to be put in his place and submit' which - several things to unpack I disagree with there. So, Will can be 'stereotypical' and that's not a bad thing! In several ways he is! And that's awesome. And maybe Mike wants to be the one to bottom but I don't think it's because his personality needs a subversion? If that makes sense.

Regardless, every fandom has this problem. And it's not something that I really think the show is going to clarify haha. So read what you like, write what you like. And be kind about it.

[rotfallen]

I have decided to post the analysis here. The song is It Should've Been Me by Riproducer ft. SOLARIA.

I am dropping this below the cut as it gets long. Ask me to tag it because I'm not sure what to tag it with lol.

Let’s start with the first verse:

[ Not too loud

Not too quiet

Don’t be proud

Don’t be shy 

It’s rude to stare

Oh, do I dare?

Keep it bold

Don’t be timid

Not too slow

Make it quick 

It’s so unfair

I’m almost there ]

In my eyes, this is what she’s learned from the books she’s read. After all, reading is where she gets most of her information anyways. She also feels like she’s lacking because she isn’t seen as a “woman” in most people’s eyes because her body stopped growing at a young age.

Let’s continue into the first pre-chorus:

[ Lost in a fantasy

My very own pandora’s box

Swarmed by my jealousy

I hope that it doesn’t show

Ire dipped in flattery

Nobody’s been as close as me

I spilled my guts

And all for what? ]

Here we have Sharon trying very hard to hide her jealousy when Break spends his time with other people as opposed to her. She feels like she’s being left behind or abandoned by him, but she keeps her feelings hidden under a kind smile. She feels like all she’s done for him is pointless if he won’t see that she’s right there.

Now for the first chorus:

[ It should’ve been me

You should have picked me from the start

And after everything I’ve done for you

You don’t think it’s bizarre?

It should’ve been me

Where do you think I got my spark?

I chiseled down my personality

'Til it's a work of art ]

Sharon is willing to do anything to be noticed by Break, including chiseling down her own personality to make herself likable in his eyes. And yet he still won’t look her way.

Second verse:

[ There you are

Can’t they see it?

I’m in awe

Could it be?

“It’s rude to stare”

Yes, I’m aware!

What a sight

Nearly perfect

You alright?

Does it hurt?

I will be there

You know I care! ]

Sharon cares for Break. She hates it when he gets hurt, and states constantly that she’ll be by his side no matter what. And yet, due to his fear of attachment, he pushes her aside. Which makes Sharon angry. She doesn’t understand it. She never has.

Second pre-chorus:

[ Caught in my fantasies

Don’t look inside pandora’s box

Push down the jealousy

No, nobody needs to know

Please don’t think less of me!

I’m but a lonely soul, you see

Oh, what a shame

I’ve gone insane ]

Sharon has driven herself crazy trying to get Break to realize her feelings for him. In her eyes, he’s just stupid and oblivious, and thinks that she just has to try harder (at the cost of her own sanity and self-worth). She keeps pushing down the jealousy more and more.

Second chorus time:

[ It should’ve been me

I oughta be there by your side

Just think of all the possibilities that we could bring to life

It should’ve been me

I think I need you to survive

So now it’s your responsibility to make me stay alive ]

She feels like she has to be by Break’s side, no matter what. And ever since he became her retainer, she has been the one by his side. She feels like she won’t survive without him, and starts to think that her life is his responsibility.

Let’s move on to the bridge/final pre-chorus:

[ Trapped in this travesty

You’ve opened up pandora’s box

Struck by reality

It’s time to wrap up the show

Yes, it is how it seems

I’m full of animosity

And here I am

Where do you stand? ]

Sharon is finally done holding back her feelings. She blows up on him, finally letting out how she truly feels straight to his face. She’s done bottling up her jealousy.

And finally, the chorus, which is broken up:

[ It could’ve been me

Although I’m better than the rest

My polarizing rationality just couldn’t pass the test

It could’ve been me

But I’m unsure of my intent

Surely my fragile hospitality would shatter from the stress! ]

This part is Sharon giving up on trying anymore. She realizes that maybe it wasn’t for the best, and is dealing with the aftermath of that realization. She thinks that maybe her intentions weren’t the best ones after all.

[ It shouldn’t be me

And here I thought I was above

But now it’s clear to me you saw that I’m unworthy of your love

It shouldn’t be me

And I’m okay with that because I truly only want the best for you 

And I am not the one ]

Sharon admits that she only wants the best for Break, and that she isn’t the woman that will give him that happiness. It takes her a while to get over it and shake those feelings away, but she does.

She also feels that she’s “unworthy” of his love, as stated in the lyrics quite literally.